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Recent market research says that the average gamer spends six hours a week playing video games, and when you consider hardcore and professional gamers, you can be talking about six hours a day. IKEA, the ubiquitous Swedish furnishing company, has teamed up with the prosthetics firm UNYQ to design Ubik, the chair custom-fit to one's posterior. When someone purchases one in an IKEA store, they would get their backside scanned from which custom-made 3D-printed inserts would be produced and shipped to the customer.
"Gamers are an extreme use case. They're athletes, they're competing with their minds and their bodies," says Ingemarsson, as he tested the prototype on stage. "I think bringing this type of personalization to fit unique ergonomic needs, body types and modes of play will give somebody a healthier life and a better competitive advantage."
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday September 17 2018, @02:10PM (3 children)
The biggest problem with used is they're customizable from memory there's A B C weight classes and at a former employer so nobody had the bad feels they bought giant chairs for everyone and those are sorta uncomfortable for smaller folks, throne like. Aside from mere mass there's massive differences thru the years for all the other ergonomics, arm rests or not, that weird back thing that pokes in your back making it uncomfortable, etc.
Also they're rated to 350 and we had some big boys at my former employer and they'd kill chairs occasionally. Amazingly people don't trust the mesh so they overbuild the hell out of it, the dead chairs mostly had dead lift mechanisms not torn mesh. Much like some cars were only driven by 75 year old women five miles to church every sunday so they're like new and some cars were drag raced by 19 year old meth addicts and are a little worn around the edges. I kind of can evaluate a car and know mechanics who can do a better job and some places offer used car maint agreements, but complicated ergo-chairs are unclear to me.
So buying an Aeron used is like buying a used car, you can't just ask "mail me a used car" and expect it to turn out well.
In other news, semi related, OSHA allows desks to have 22-30 inches of knee space, the top of my knees is 25 inches off the floor, and a former employer installed keyboard trays underneath the desks that couldn't be lifted above 24 inches with the excuse that you can just lean forward or go into extreme wide-knee stance or keep your legs non-perpendicular to the floor or just twist your body all day. Thank god one of the unions complained and several of us got our keyboard trays removed. I took mine out myself with a screwdriver. Anyway the point of this superficially unrelated story is attempts at hyper-customized ergonomic stuff usually result in two things: 1) people F up the customization 2) there will always be a bean counter who will "save money" by eliminating all customization and forcing something that doesn't fit. So look out for those two anti-patterns when buying your ergo chair. You have to buy an Aeron knowing you're probably going to mess up the purchase requiring more cash, such that going to a dealer and buying a new one MIGHT be cheaper in the long run than buying a used one and a pile of spare / wrong sized parts.
There's a purpose for mail order ergo chairs, like if there's 50 in your building and you can sit in each until you find the right model, then mail order your own exact replica. But for a dude going in cold, I donno about mail order or used.
(Score: 2) by richtopia on Monday September 17 2018, @04:53PM (2 children)
Yea, you are right about hit or miss used chair quality. Specifically the Large size Aeron chairs: they have wider mesh (more leverage) and handle heavy occupants, so they wear out much faster. At work we have Steelcase Leap chairs and I now prefer them to the Aeron I personally own.
Often on Craig's List you can find a clearing house (example below). The price may have a premium over private party sales but you can sit in and inspect the furniture before purchasing, and there is a selection to choose from. Like everything life is a compromise: brand new is pricy, reseller is less pricy, sight unseen is risky.
https://portland.craigslist.org/mlt/fud/d/herman-miller-aeron-chairs/6680709540.html [craigslist.org]
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday September 17 2018, @08:56PM
I've heard nothing but good stories about those, specifically version 2 or option 2 or some such. Are they any good? I've never sat in one.
I came up with an interesting justification for mail order sight unseen used Aeron chairs... spare parts are supposedly not cheap, so if an entire used chair is cheaper than two new replacement arm rests, may as well buy the whole chair for the arms and toss the guts in a corner of the basement until needed.
My main office chair is a office warehouse store "executive chair" all puffy and comfy. My general understanding from when I hurt my back based on talking to the doc is the quality of the chair sets how long you can sit in it without pain; but since I was prescribed to get up and walk around on a regular basis for my back recovery (more than a decade ago) it doesn't matter too much for me, although I am thinking of getting a new chair, so maybe... Kinda like my back and now my lifestyle limit me to a couple hours without a break so there's no point upgrading from a four hour chair to an eight hour chair if I never exceed two hours anyway between getting up and walking around or even working out during a break.
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Monday September 17 2018, @09:34PM
But then the question of how do you avoid knockoffs? (Clearing house or private party)?
This sig for rent.